Memory Man
by Tower of Babel
Summary: A Batman/Nightwing Short story. Based off the events established in the Nightwing #49 Comic Book (2018). After Nightwing/Dick Grayson gets shot in the head, he doesn't remember his past and goes to Barbara in an attempt to get some answers. But nothing she tells him triggers anything... (Prequel to my novel Nightwing Junior).


_**"MEMORY MAN"**_  
 _ **—A Batman/Nightwing Short Nugget—**_

 _Based off the events established in the Nightwing #49 Comic Book (2018)_

Dick tried to remember who he was. Barbara kept pestering him about his past, but Dick, frustrated, couldn't remember any of what she was saying. They were sitting on the front steps of Barbara's apartment.

"I'm telling you, I can't remember it; I can't remember anything, Barbara!"

"You used to call me Babs, remember? Dick, you used to call me Babs."

"Stop saying that! I don't remember anything. I was shot in the head, I don't remember anything about anything for the past couple of years, even on that day."

"Then we're going to have to re-educate you, Dick, all of us: me, Bruce, Jason, Tim, and Damian. We're going to have to take you back to school, to the School of Hard Knocks, to the school of where you came; as tragic as it may be to remember; and believe me, being shot in the head was not your most tragic event ever."

"I don't want to remember then, Barbara. I don't really want to remember any of the history I've forgotten. It's too painful. Every time I think about it, I get a headache. So, let's just drop it okay? Perhaps my memory will return someday, but the surgeon did say the bullet did a lot of damage. The bullet passed right directly through my skull, deep into my brain. It still hurts. Just give me some time okay? Give me some time alone. I need to get my thoughts in order, if that's even possible anymore. I'm so confused and so frustrated."

She caressed his cheek with a hand. "Then let me do something for you, Dick, and perhaps it will trigger something, something that we once both shared. I want to sleep with you. I'll show you the passion we once had and I want to give you me—all of me!"

Barbara initialled the kiss as their lips met. To Dick, she was just another woman.

That night Dick and Barbara made love. Unfortunately the passion was just not there, and Dick did not remember anything of the love he once had for Barbara, and in the end, when he sat up a bed, Barbara cried to herself silently. "I have to go now Barbara, I'm sorry. It's not that I couldn't, it's just that I don't feel anything for you, not like the way you want me to." It may've sounded cold and thoughtless, but that was how he felt. Had the bullet to his brain really did that much damage?

x x x

Being on top of this building, the building where Barbara lived, he thought he could gather his thoughts. But the more Dick looked across the city landscape, the more he saw an unfamiliar land. This was Bludhaven, and supposedly, this was where he once lived and fought crime, as the vigilante known as Nightwing.

His phone rang, it was Damian. But he didn't want to talk to the kid right now. He really didn't know what to say; he didn't remember the kid enough now to try to explain the situation to him. And what could he say to him? He couldn't remember most of anything that occurred after he had woken up in the hospital bed.

He was told by the doctor that he was shot by a rifle through the skull, but they still had not found the culprit. But the marksman was an excellent sharpshooter, a professional.

He let his cell phone ring six times before it stopped, a voicemail then saved. He listened to the message: Damian expressed concern and wanted to see him. The boy sounded almost about to cry from the message.

From what Barbara had told him, he and Damian had gotten very close at one point as a crime fighting duo, but Dick couldn't remember any of it, nothing of his past came back to him. He had complete amnesia, and he now called himself Ric or Gray. This Richard Grayson, or Nightwing, was foreign to him.

He looked through the gallery of his phone and saw pictures of himself, supposedly, in black and blue tights with a mask. This was the infamous Nightwing Barbara spoke about. This was his past self that he couldn't remember. There were countless pictures, taken as selfies, as he was flying through the air. He was told by Barbara that he had once been a member of The Flying Grayson's, a circus troupe in Haley's Circus, way back when, when he was much younger.

But he couldn't remember that either. There were so many pictures in his gallery. And as he continued to flip through them, as he looked at each one, he became more and more angry. This was not his life anymore. Who this person was, was not the person who he was now. The Dick Grayson/Nightwing person that once existed, existed no longer.

Another phone call came through, it was a from someone named "Wally". He didn't know who he was, but this Wally must have been friends with his old self if he was on a first-name basis with him to add him to his contacts.

Once again he did not answer the phone. All he wanted to do was to be left alone. So many people were bothering him, pestering him, to try to remember his past. It was frustrating to say the least. All I wanted to do stand here and think. But his brain seemed to stop working the way he thought it should. He knew something was wrong. He knew something missing. He knew the pieces of his past needed to be reassembled like a jigsaw puzzle. But from what the doctor had said about his severe brain injury, that may never be possible again.

He threw his phone away and saw it smash against the building across the way. He had quite an arm now, a pitchers arm. His muscles were well defined like they had been honed for years. Barbara did say he liked to stay in shape.

But he couldn't remember anything of that. He felt truly alone. For now, he would hide in the shadows, and walk the streets and see if he could find his own way home, and without distractions.

Would he ever be the man he used to be?

And did he want to?

Ric or Gray screamed into the night.

END


End file.
